Everything, For You
by Caari
Summary: A long and storied history marks Miles and Phoenix's relationship, from innocent beginnings to bitter ends. On the verge of reconciliation, a single shot could end it all. Life flashes before his eyes, dredging up memories of how it used to be and what lead him to his moment. A series of interconnected drabbles, from the 100 Themes Challenge. Narumitsu, warnings inside.
1. Prologue

**_A/N: _**_ This fanfiction will be comprised of 100 separate chapters, some long, some short. They are told, for the most part, from Miles' POV. Possible warnings to come, with each chapter to be tagged individually. This chapter's tags:_

_Violence, blood, possible major character death._

* * *

_"Breathe! Breathe, goddamnit!"_

He coughs hard, his whole body shattering in the one motion, and there is blood pooling behind his molars and drooling down his chin. One cough becomes another until he is hacking and wheezing frantically, and there is the panic, coursing through his veins, searing hot and he can't, he can't do this, there's a fire in his chest, he's on fire, he's bleeding, there's a hole in his chest, too much blood, he's swooning-

_"Stay with me, pal! C'mon, that's it-look at me! Stay awake!"_

Motion. Endless motion all about him, leaving him in a torrid whirlwind of color and light, stained intermittantly with large splotches of inky blackness. There is a light, bright and white, in his eyes, and he wonders if this is the end even as they slap the plastic respirator around his nose and mouth. Cold air floods his lungs but he is not taking it in, is not filtering it; it sits and swells his lungs until they begin the chest compressions again, and he is breathing.

_"Tha-that's good, pal, er, Mister Edgeworth, just like that! Don't take your eyes off me-up here, up here! Just look at me, look at the light-"_

_"Where is he?!"_

_"M-Mister Wright-"_

_"Miles?! Miles, where- MILES! Miles, no!"_

_(Oh good. Phoenix is here.)_ He thinks he is smiling; he does not realize he is merely twitching, head lolling this way and that, spine jerking sharply as he coughs and sprays blood on the inside of the respiratory mask. The large man flinches and immediately his attention is back on the prone prosecutor, thick hand clenching at the gurney. His other arm, still wielding the flashlight for Miles' eyes to follow, is simultaneously attempting to fend off the panicking defense attorney.

_"J-Just hang on a sec, pal! Mister Edgeworth-"_

_"Miles, baby, I'm here! I'm... Oh god...!"_

He feels the blood dripping down the concave wall of the mask to trickle onto his cheek and cannot help but to think _(Is this really it? Is this what my life trickles down to...? Blood and tears shed...over what?)_ His face scrunches up in the most exquisite display of agony before he tries to scream, truly scream, the searing hot pain in his chest unbearable.

But he can't.

His face frozen, he writhes and thrashes before going still, darkness descending upon him as unconsciousness wrests control of his cognition from him, and he can't help but wonder,

_(How did it all come to this...?)_


	2. I Introduction

**I. Introduction**

_(Why did I agree to this nonsense again...?)_

He shifts in silence, tense and awkward in all of his pretentious grace, donning his most dissatisfied frown. One hand poised tentatively about the shaft of a champagne flute, his other remains firmly wrapped within his partner's hand, every bit as tense as its master. Miles Edgeworth hides behind the well-worn mask of a stoic prosecutor, stowing away the face of an intensely squeamish man, willing each sip of the bubbly drink that washes over his tongue to take some of his blush with it.

It matters not how old he grows, nor how social his job demands he be; conversations held on the subject of his personal business cause his intestines to twist into the heaviest of knots, uncomfortable at the very thought of conducting one. Edgeworth, it turns out, values his privacy above most anything else and would sooner depart a room than discuss himself at length. Despite his flare for the dramatic and his decadent manner of dress, the limelight ill-suits him and he much prefers to avoid it altogether, thank you very much. It was nobody's damn business anyhow.

It is a near impossible task, though, to slip away to a far corner and pretend to gaze thoughtfully out of the window-contemplating all the while the quickest route he could cut through the room to the exit, deciding that a few knocked shoulders would be well worth the escape-when his partner steadfastly refuses to release his hand. He has already tried several times to do just that and, in meeting failure at each attempt, has now entirely given up the endeavor. The thought flits through his mind to try again, though, as his name rises and falls from his partner's rapidly flapping lips.

As if on cue, that warm hand gives his own a squeeze; the man attached to that hand has yet to drag him into the intense conversation, however, and he is grateful. He drinks, feeling a little less red with embarrassment now even as the alcohol lends his pale cheeks a rosy glow. His gaze shifts to the other guests still milling about the room, then to the vaulted window to his right. They fall everywhere except upon that man in the blue suit so eagerly chatting away to the other guests. _(Damn him, he won't stop talking!)_

Chatting about the exhibit. About the gorgeous decor, the truly masterful pieces hung about the walls and behind the glass. About the mohawk-sporting, skirt-chasing "genius" behind the easel.

_(Oh yes. That's right.)_

_"Come on, Miles, you know he'll only whine if you don't come too!" Hands pressed flat to his hips, that disappointed pout he wore just because he knew it would wear him down, dressed in that cheap blue apron stained with ketchup... How could he say no to that?_

_"Your point is?"_

_"Please?" A shift of expression from despondent to sly, and then he coos, "And anyway, you did promise you'd take me someplace nice on our next date."_

_Edgeworth sighs, the newspaper crinkling loudly as his grip upon it tightens. He had, hadn't he? "Larry's premiere at the gallery downtown hardly qualifies as 'nice,' Wright. Though I suppose I can forgive you for mistaking it as such. A few 'crystal' chandeliers and 'marble' pillars, and any simpleton would be fooled into believing it to be a veritable palace of high culture."_

_"Owch." Still he chuckles, giving his slate-blue eyes an exasperated roll, hands lifting from his hips to cross about his chest. "C'mon Miles... Please?"_

Fourteen hours and several flutes of champagne later, he drifts in and out of the endless barrage of chatter that assaults his nerves, a dull ache now settling on the very outskirts of his brain. He wonders if it would be too late to excuse himself to the car and search out a bottle of aspirin...

"...and this is my boyfriend, Miles Edgeworth."

The prosecutor's head snaps up with such a violent jerk, one would have thought he'd been struck by an uppercut. The resulting jolt only causes his head to throb harder.

_(What did he just-?)_

Phoenix turns his head to smile back at him, his unoccupied hand gesturing vaguely at the man standing several paces ahead of him. "Miles, this is Mr. Gene Hartford, the cardiologist I defended a while back-ah." Those crooked brows dip down as his gaze is met by a blank stare. "Are you alright?" Slate-blue darts downward, catches sight of the meager half-inch of bubbly left sitting in the once-full flute. A bemused sigh and an eyeroll later, and he says, "Jeez... Methinks somebody's had a bit too much to drink tonight."

He laughs, the doctor following suit. The blush rises with a bloody vengeance to the prosecutor's cheeks, redoubling its efforts to drown his face in a whorish rouge with the support of its good friend, alcohol. He gives Phoenix's hand a tight squeeze, a quiet warning of the severe tongue-lashing he is quickly earning himself.

The defense attorney, eternally perceptive, flashes a sheepishly apologetic grin to him before looking to the cardiologist again. "He was in Switzerland at the time of the trial, but he still managed to help me interpret that coded message... If it weren't for him, that trial might not have turned out as well as it did."

The doctor says something that sounds rather grateful, complimentary even. The defense attorney laughs again, hand rubbing the back of his neck, saying something witty in turn. Edgeworth, too preoccupied with his previous thoughts, tunes out the conversation once more.

_(Did he really introduce me as his...boyfriend? To be sure, that is an...accurate title. But...)_ He realizes then that he has never said the word, in reference to Phoenix, aloud before. He wonders why. Some half-arsed and dubiously reasoned logic later, and he concludes that he had always condemned such a term to be too juvenile to attach to himself. There was something so very sophomoric about the word "boyfriend" that didn't sit well with him; he couldn't quite put his finger on why.

His hand is cold.

He glances down at it, the world sloshing about him as though made of half-melted jello. It is empty, bereft of Phoenix's hand. Why?

His shoulders are warm. _(Oh. So _that's_ where his hand went.)_

He glances up and finds his eyes transfixed by deep ocean blue, crinkled with some mixture of concern and amusement. Even with the world swimming around them, his partner stands as fixed and solid as ever, a constant in an unstable world. He smiles, and so too does Edgeworth.

"Hey, Miles, how many have you had...?" The prosecutor furrows his brows, thinking a moment. When no concrete number is recalled, he rolls his shoulders in an easy shrug, deciding that would be a much simpler answer to give. His lips were leaden with drink; he couldn't have said anything anyway. The defense attorney laughs and shakes his head. "Hopeless... Now how are we going to get home?"

"You can drive."

"...what license?" Edgeworth shrugs, Phoenix balks. Soon enough, he watches as the blue-suited man gives his head an exasperated shake. "Man oh man. Okay, I guess I can give it a shot. But you don't get to yell at me if we cr-"

"You called me your boyfriend."

"Huh?"

The man shifts, the world tilting beneath his feet. Or perhaps he was tilting upon the world, balance overthrown by the booze circulating within him? Goodness, how much HAD he had to drink? Regretting the decision entirely, he cannot stop his slurred speech from spreading into the space separating them. "When introducing me...you called me your boyfriend."

"...yes?" comes the slow reply, the attorney's eyebrows furrowed in confusion, a cautious sort of gleam in his eyes. "Is that a problem, Miles...?"

He shakes his head, even before his thoughts know how to properly react to that particularly loaded question. It was not a problem, that much he is sure of. Hell, it does not even bother him, if he is being entirely truthful. "I sssimply found it. Hrm," he presses his knuckle to his lip, furrowing his brow. A small burp. "I simply found it curious to hear it a...alo...said."

Phoenix relaxes visibly. "I see. You don't mind then?"

"S'pose not." The words come easily enough, truth laid bare as the liquor holds the pretension at bay. When he bares his teeth in what most would accuse of being a smile, even he admits he's had one too many. He never smiles in public-it's one of his rules. "I've just, ahmmm...always referred to us as 'partners' or some...suchness."

"Suchness isn't-"

"Don't argue semantics with me, Wright."

The defense attorney laughs and that laugh invades the prosecutor's soul, filling him to the brim with warmth. How he loves this man so! He is overcome with the urge to kiss those laughing lips, and so he does, capturing them as he takes an unsteady tumble forward. Chests colliding, the dismount is sloppy but he sticks the landing and even earns a delighted coo from the recipient.

How he loves this man. How happy he makes him. How he wishes he had the gull to call him "boyfriend" in public, how he is quite satisfied in the term "partner" nevertheless. Words simply could not say.

They kiss.


	3. II Complicated

**II. Complicated**

"Ah! Give me a sec, Miles." Phone clutched in hand, Phoenix stands and flashes the prosecutor his best apologetic grin, finger held aloft as though to confirm that this little interruption will dealt with swiftly. He receives a stern glare in response, boring into his back even as he retreats quickly (head bowed, voice low and professional) from the room.

Edgeworth sighs, leaning back in his leather armchair. Fingers steepled over the plane of his stomach, he plans to silently await the attorney's return. He has forgotten the presence of the other in the room, until-

"So. Are you, or aren't you?"

He jumps slightly, startled, and snaps his attention to the plucky young Maya, who is leaned over the edge of his desk, looking for all the world that she's got the dirtiest secret dangling precariously above her head. He is perplexed.

"Pardon?"

"Ohhh come on, Mr. Edgeworth!" She balls her hands into fists, putting on her most determined scowl. Her voice is an insistant whisper despite their solitude. "Nick won't spill! Are you two boyfriends yet or what?"

A flustered rouge floods his cheeks and he crinkles his brows, sternly glaring at the pen on his desk. He sits up straight, then hunches his shoulders, then straightens up once more and rearranges his bangs with his fingers, harrumphing all the while. She finds some amusement in this, if her shit-eating grin and mischievous cackle is any evidence.

"So you are!"

"No!" Edgeworth snaps hastily, immediately regretting doing so. "N-no, that's... We aren't 'boyfriends,' per ce. That is..." He pauses, groping around the corners of his mind for the proper term, finding that he does not currently possess such a word. What were they, anyway? "...it's complicated."

"Ohhh," she groans, giving her eyes a very adolescent roll. "Same thing! You both said the same thing."

"Well, if Wright does not feel at liberty to say one way or another-" Why does that cause his heart to ache so? Could it be that it bothers him that neither of them have bothered to ask the other yet? that they hold no title, no formal standing, only longing glances and fond words and that single, world-melting kiss that neither man will acknowledge happened aloud but _oh, it did, it did, just thinking about it makes my heart leap and my tongue tie itself in knots, oh I can still feel his lips..._ "-then I suppose I cannot say with any great certainty one way or another, Miss Fey."

Yes, it bothers him greatly.

"Whatever!" A huff, and she's sitting in the chair before his desk once more, arms crossed over her chest. The smile is back before another second has passed though. "You two are just too cute, pretending like you aren't when you so very clearly are."

"We are not pretending, we-" The door clicks as it is opened and in walks Phoenix. When their eyes meet, and the defense attorney flashes him that goofy smile of his, the whole world brightens. The blush remains and his voice drops to a low whisper. "It's complicated." Then he straightens up, and it's business as usual.


	4. III Making History

**III. Making History**

Though the courtroom is hushed, he can feel the awe swelling beneath the shock, and suddenly there is noise! Cheers and shouts and screams, such noise there was, and he can scarcely think for hearing, the noise scrabbling his already muddled thoughts. The bundled nerves in his stomach begin to dissipate as he looks up into the eyes of the judge, the audience. All eyes on him, all cheering and shouting and screaming.

This is victory.

The young prosecutor takes a sweeping bow, flourish in his every motion. His first victory-history in the making. There had never been a lawyer so young as he to grace this country's judicial system. To think that one so young had bested a veteran! Somewhere in the back of the gallery, an older man stands, watching with only the smuggest of satisfaction before turning sharply on his heel and walking with all the grace of an aristocrat from the boisterous courtroom.

The older man is smiling. There is no joy in his eyes.

The younger man is not smiling. There is no joy in his eyes, either.

This is victory. Why did it feel so empty?

-

The courtroom is hushed, tension palpable as the pale-faced man stares across the room from the defendant's box to the even paler old man standing behind the prosecution's bench. His head shakes and aches and his heart-oh, how it burns! It burns with sorrow and anger and hatred as he stares at the sham of a man his mentor revealed himself to be. The tension swells and swells, filling every space around him, and he thinks that it might crush him.

The judge's gavel comes down as those two words are expelled from his lips, but they are swept away in the eruption of joyous thunder from the galleries beyond him. The audience jumps and shouts, cheering and applauding with a force he has never before experienced. This was not noise-it was all consuming passion, heartfelt relief and true joy.

A wrong has been wrighted.

The bailiffs swoop down upon the man, stripped of his dignity, his grace, his everything and laid bare before the eyes of the world. Strong hands clap the prosecutor's back and draw his eyes away from that sight for only a moment as he glances to his left at the mohawked man who saved his life with an ever-unreliable but crucially truthful testimony; he glances to his right at the blue-suited defense attorney who saved his life through sheer strength of will and determination to see his best friend walk away innocent.

His heart gives a leap. This man has made history today, he has yet to realize it. The news stations would assure him of as much in a few hours, the newspapers again tomorrow.

But he wrenches his eyes away from them to stare at that old man still clinging to the illusion of grace and control even as his life falls away from them. Their eyes meet, grey on blue, and there is fire in the land of ice.

The old man does not smile, his venom spreading through every hateful crease on his aged face. His long-wrought plan for revenge has failed. There is no joy in his eyes.

The young man does not smile, either. He has no cause to. This man's incarceration and inevitable execution will not bring back his father, nor will they restore the peace of mind that had been robbed from him for fifteen long years.

There is no joy in his eyes. But there is triumph, there is relief, there is the promise of recovery and moving on with his life at long last.

This is victory.

He smiles.


	5. IV Rivals

Edgeworth's fist slams against the bench with a resounding '_thwack_', his eyes bulging from his face as he glares at that smug blue suit. How? How did he always manage to turn the evidence-_his own damn evidence!_-against him like that?! A vicious snarl rises from his throat, blocking out the judge as he announces that the court must reconvene tomorrow after more investigation has been conducted. The gavel rings out. Court is dismissed.

In the time it takes for Edgeworth to regain his composure, Phoenix has already tidied up his bench and packed all of his relevant papers and evidence away. When the prosecutor stoops to gather his own briefcase and stands straight once more, there he is, smiling apologetically down at him. The steel grey eyes of the prosecutor tells the defense precisely where he can shove his apology.

"It's been a while since you got so worked up, Miles." A throw-away comment, probably meant as a joke. The prosecutor is not impressed and the defense knows it. "C'mon, we're supposed to help each other, right? Exposing the truth, I mean. And that's what I did!"

"What you did, Wright, is make me look like an utter fool!" That fist slams down again; the defense attorney flinches. "Honestly, could you stand to point out a flaw in the testimony without belittling my witnesses and myself in the process?!"

Phoenix snorts, one hand held contemptuously on his hip. "Do you want to be the pot or kettle?"

"Do not get smart with me, Wright!"

"Testy, testy." The defense attorney sighs, turning away from the irate prosecutor. His hand raises and waves dismissively in the air as though brushing the man's biting words from his air space. Somehow, that only irritates Edgeworth more. Then these words follow, popping a hole in the rapidly inflating balloon of anger within the prosecutor: "Well, I guess if I put you in this bad of a mood, maybe it would be best if we didn't go out to dinner tonight."

A stutter rises in Edgeworth's throat. "No! No, no, we have been planning this for..."

A shrug rises to Phoenix's shoulders, that dismissive hand still waving. "Plans change according to the weather sometimes. Dinner in a storm isn't exactly enticing."

_(Damn him.)_

Edgeworth sighs softly, shaking his head as he brings his palm up to his face, willing the irritation to bleed out with his breath into his palm. He murmurs something that may have been an apology and Phoenix doesn't quite hear it, so he asks him to repeat himself, nearly earning a sharp glare. The prosecutor manages to soften the look before it sinks in, however, and repeats himself a little louder. "I apologize. I did not mean to snap. This whole trial has simply been grating on my nerves."

"Why? Because you know I'm going to win, as_ always_?"

_(Yes.)_ "No. Don't be cocky, Wright."

"But you like it when I'm cocky, don't you?"

_(Yes.) _ "It makes you look like an ass."

Phoenix pouts fiercely, the expression a poor imitation of the genuine article. Sometimes Edgeworth doubts the validity of the man's claims to being a star member of his university's drama troupe. "If it makes me look like an ass, what does it make you look like? You're cocky all the time."

"It is an endearing trait of mine, I will have you know. You cannot properly envision Miles Edgeworth without that cocksure gleam in his eye, that devilishly knowing smile on his lips as he raises his finger to tap his forehead-"

"Hypocrite."

"I am not!" The prosecutor balks, the defense laughs, reaching forward to give his shoulder a jostle.

"I'm teasing, Miles. Quit getting so worked up all the time-it's not good for your blood pressure." A wink is thrown in the prosecutor's face, that heart-warming grin spreading just below it. "Now let's go. I'm starving."


	6. V Unbreakable

_**A/N: **This chapter contains abuse, particularly child abuse. _

* * *

**V. Unbreakable**

The green-and-blue vase rattles as he collides with the table, pain blossoming so quickly in his head as it strikes the corner. He means to make a noise but, in his pain, forgets how. It is not a good idea anyway; it would only make the master madder.

Miles is sorry, so very sorry. Sir ignores the wet on his face for the most part, though the sneer he wears tells him that it has been seen. He waits for the sharp dig of the patent leather heel in his side, but it does not come. His infraction was minor, Sir snarls, but intolerable nonetheless. Bed without dinner, effective immediately.

_(Yes, Sir...)_

Eyes kept low, voiceless, Miles stands on wobbly knees, the task made harder without the support of the table. He would not dream of using it for such a thing-that would be a sign of weakness. A sign of imperfection. Intolerable and unthinkable.

How was he to know that it is against The Rules for him to read the letters (however few) he receives? He did not even know he received letters until this afternoon.

He will never know he receives letters again after this afternoon.

Knees stop knocking just long enough for him to stand, and when he dips his head low in a reverent bow, they are firmer than ever in their resolve. The boy, picture of grace that he is, turns quickly so that Sir will not have to suffer his presence a moment longer and walks swiftly down the hall. The red welt on his cheek burns even as the darkness of his room consumes his visage.

He does not bother turning on the light. He does not want to see his marred and imperfect face in the looking glass above his alloted writing desk, nor can he bare the thought of accidentally setting eyes upon the precious framed countenance of his father.

What a disappointment he must be.

Wordless but whimpering (a luxury he affords himself now that he is well without Sir's earshot), he crawls into the pristine full-sized bed afforded to him by his caretakers and tries his hardest not to miss the little twin-sized number back home.

_(This is home now.)_

Discomforted entirely, he reaches blindly for the thick journal kept on his bedside table, drawing it in to clutch it to his rapidly heaving chest. When at last he can breathe without sobbing, he swipes his small hand across his wet eyes and sits up, back perfectly straight against the headboard as he sets the journal upon his laugh, merely contemplating it for some time.

The book is small but heavy with importance upon the boy's thin legs, and it is with the gravest reverence that he opens it, sure not to bend a single page. It falls open easily to the page marked by a single photo, one he dares not place in a frame; it is this photo that he takes up in his palm, cradling it as though it is the most delicate of flowers.

The dim silvery beams of moonlight that fall over the room does little to illuminate this treasure, yet he dares not flip on the lamp by his side just yet. To do so would only invite further attention; to invite attention would be to doom his treasure to a life in a landfill somewhere...or worse. Instead, Miles shifts the journal aside and lays himself along the bed, holding the photo parallel to the footboard to catch the moonlight upon its glossy surface.

The photo is not spectacular. It is blurry, and the tiniest smudge of pink in the corner suggests a pointer finger had strayed a bit too far into the range of the lense.

The smile of the boy in the photo is spectacular nonetheless, and that is all that counts, really. Frozen in that moment, Miles is as transfixed now as he had been when he had snapped the picture on his father's digital camera through the commotion of the students filing, one by one, into the enormous theater. They had gone to see Macbeth.

That was his favorite. He had told him as much weeks prior to the trip; he had told him twice as much on the bus-ride through the winding city streets.

Miles is crying again and he is not entirely sure why, eyes red and burning as punishment for his weakness. After a moment of reflection spent face-deep in the silken comforter, he supposes it is because, more than his home...

...more than his school...

...more than his twin-sized bed in his comfortably-sized room in his comfortably-sized house...

...more even, almost, than his father...

...he misses Phoenix.

He never thought he would think such a ludicrous thing; but there it is, as true as it would be even if he bothered to deny it. That headstrong lost puppy had, in the short time they had known one another, endeared himself to the young boy, and it was his ever-optimistic and ever-smiling presence that Miles misses more dearly than any else.

And as the warm tears cut down his now swollen cheek, he makes a solemn vow, kept between himself, this picture, and the moonlight: he will see Phoenix again. He must. No matter the cost, he simply must see this boy again, must take his face in his hands and just hold him and look at him, at his smile.

Maybe it is just wishful thinking.

But thinking of that boy's smile makes the hurt stop, even if for a little while. The phantom grin coupled with the memory of warmth are the only things that mend the wounds on his heart.

He must be strong, in the meantime, if he ever hopes to meet this boy again. If this place-if Sir-breaks him between now and when next they meet, there will not be a Miles Edgeworth left for those smiles to fix.

He simply must.


End file.
